Finding the Corners In Pooh's Real Forest

I DISCOVERED Winnie-the-Pooh Country by accident. Glancing through some tourist brochures while staying in Sussex, I was intrigued by an advertisement for Pooh Corner, a shop in nearby Hartfield that specialized in Winnie-the-Pooh. Reading on, I discovered that Hartfield had been the country home of A. A. Milne, who had set his world-famous children's stories, "Winnie-the-Pooh" and "The House at Pooh Corner," in adjoining Ashdown Forest.

The Forest! Although it had been years since I had reread the Pooh stories, I did remember the seductive appeal of the Forest. "Once upon a time, a very long time ago now, about last Friday, Winnie-the-Pooh lived in a forest all by himself under the name of Sanders." His friend Christopher Robin had lived, enticingly, "behind a green door in another part of the Forest."

Although my husband, James, and I had stayed several times on the very edge of Ashdown Forest, a preserve of 6,400 acres only 70 miles southeast of London, we had never known it was there. A wild expanse of heathland that encompasses woodland, streams, bogs and farms, the forest is a complex ecosystem, a richly historic landscape and a refuge for walkers, horseback riders and picnickers. It is also the dream-tinged land of solitude and freedom created by Ernest H. Shepard in his illustrations for Milne's stories.

To get a proper introduction to Ashdown Forest, James and I stopped at the Forest Center, tucked into Broadstone Warren, a mile past Wych Cross, where the A22 and A275 meet. The center, housed in three old oak-framed and heather-thatched barns offers programs, informative displays, booklets, brochures and trail maps.

Here we learned that the modern lineage of Ashdown Forest began in 1372, when Edward III granted the forest as part of the Manor of Duddleswell to John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster. Long a royal hunting preserve of the medieval English kings, the forest eventually passed to the Earl de la Warr as Lord of the Manor, who sold it in 1988 to the East Sussex County Council. The council in turn set up a trust to administer the forest in perpetuity.

But the forest is, of course, even more ancient. Neolithic man hunted there, and evidence of Iron Age enclosures can be found at several places in the forest. The Romans built and improved trails to gain access to iron-ore workings. In 731 the Venerable Bede described the forest as "thick and inaccessible; a place of retreat for large herds of deer and swine," inhabited by wild boars and wolves.

On the early spring day James and I set out from the information center to explore some of the forest, we did not have to worry about either accessibility or ravening beasts. The forest is easy to enter. A sharp-eyed driver can spot many turnoffs along the intersecting roads that cross it, and these parking places lead to paths through the woods or across the heathland. Although wolves and boars are long gone, the forest is still home to a large protected herd of fallow deer, as well as badgers, hedgehogs, foxes, weasels, rabbits and many other small animals.

Our path from the center led in minutes onto the open heath, and suddenly we found ourselves on the side of an almost bare hill, looking down and across a lightly wooded valley, past scattered farms and many miles away to other hills -- the North Downs -- that disappeared into the distance. This was not the Sussex or Kentish farming country I thought I knew, filled with prosperous villages, orchards, productive fields and lush gardens. This was moorland, covered in heather, bracken and gorse, with a fierce wind blowing over it that promised rain. Were we really only an hour from London?

THE Broadstone Trail, which we were following, leads for two and a half miles past a disused stone quarry, along a stream called Miry Ghyll, across a plank bridge into a wooded valley of mossy plants and ferns, and then across a traditional earth-covered sod bridge back into the heather. Ashdown Forest continued to surprise us. Not far from the returning path was a close-cropped green expanse, part of the Royal Ashdown Forest Golf Course.

From the Forest Center, we drove a few minutes to Hartfield, a charming village of half-timbered shops and houses and a medieval church with a 15th-century shingled-spire tower looking rather like an elegant peaked hat. In a Queen Anne building dating from the 1690's stands Pooh Corner.

Would Milne have exercised his gentle irony on the ingenuity of "Pooh's Busy Day Pad: A Collection of Pooh-ish Things to Colour, Cut Out and Make Up" ($6.75) or the four-inch Piglet doll, which has a cloth mini-story attached to its belly, ($12.85) or Stitch-a-Pooh-Picture, with canvas, yarn and instructions included ($11.50)?

He might well have approved, however, of the staples at Pooh Corner (whose sign also proclaims "Christopher Robin's Sweet Shop"). Lined up on shelves, 50 large glass jars display hard candies with delicious-sounding names, like bull's-eyes (which Christopher Milne, his son and model for Christopher Robin, notes in his own memoir, "The Enchanted Places," he loved as a child), mint eclairs, lemon sherbets, barley sugars, blackberry-and-custards, spearmint chews, Tom Thumb drops and blackcurrant-and-licorice. Army-and-navies, grayish-blue drops with a strong spicy flavor, "are not for the faint-hearted," according to the owner, Michael Ridley. The faint-hearted might well prefer the fruit-flavored teddy bear drops, shaped, of course, like little teddy bears.

In a cheery room at the side of the shop, Pooh Corner also provides refreshments, served on bright white crockery at six tables spread with pink and white gingham cloths, under pink and white balloons. A pot of tea is $1.40, quosh (a kind of orange squash) is $1.20, flapjacks (oat squares with treacle), $1, and gingerbread 90 cents. Cream tea -- a pot of tea, two scones, jam and clotted cream -- is $5. Sitting under the balloons, we studied a sheet giving directions to Poohsticks Bridge. This, as Milne fans know, is where Winnie-the-Pooh invented the game of Poohsticks, in which friends each drop a stick on one side of the bridge and then hurry to the other side to see whose stick drifts through first.

Although it had begun to rain, James and I were now determined to explore Pooh's part of the forest. Only minutes away, along the B2026 and then right at Chuck Hatch, following a sign to Marsh Green and Newbridge, a parking area was conveniently signposted for Poohsticks Bridge. Arrows pointed to the footpath, which led through Posingford Wood. On a weekday rainy March morning, we were the only pilgrims, but from the generous size of the parking space, and a sign warning of car thieves, we judged that summer would bring plenty of Pooh-seekers.

My own ardor for the quest suddenly waned when we came to a bridle path leading sharply downhill to the small wooden bridge. Not much more than a sunken ditch edged with barbed-wire fencing, the churned-up path had been thoroughly trodden into mire during the recent rains. After sinking a few steps ankle-deep in muck, I announced that I was willing to take Poohsticks Bridge on faith.

Back in the parking area, I consulted my Landranger Ordnance Survey map to locate any other Pooh sites. Five-Hundred Acre Wood: wouldn't that be Milne's Hundred-Acre Wood? Off we went, back along the B2026, until another parking area beckoned. Since the sun had reappeared, we struck onto the nearest path. Climbing a bracken-covered hill, we were suddenly again overlooking the same extensive view (though from a different angle) we had enjoyed at Forest Center: green hills in the hazy distance, with houses and farms looking like a set of miniatures dotted here and there. This is where Pooh and Christopher Robin felt "the whole world spread out until it reached the sky."

Just below the top of the hill, crowned by a clump of Scotch pines, we saw a small, roughly fenced, overgrown enclosure, almost like an untended burial mound. Inside the enclosure, a plaque had been set into one of several large rocks: "And by and by they came to an enchanted place on the very top of the Forest called Galleon's Lap. Here at Gills Lap are commemorated A. A. Milne (1882-1956) and E. H. Shepard (1879-1976) who collaborated in the creation of Winnie-the-Pooh and so captured the magic of Ashdown Forest and gave it to the world."

From the top of Gills Lap, we could see for miles in every direction, a full circular sweep over the moorland and bits of woods. In early spring, the heathland was still brown and russet, though heather was blooming here and there and wild primroses sparkled along many of the paths. The damp wind blew through the pines with a soft, reassuring swoosh. Though I knew a road ran just below this hill, I felt we were alone at the top of the world.

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On the way home, I studied the changing aspects of Ashdown Forest. Now I could see that trails led onto many heath-covered hills that I had once dismissed as uninteresting and infertile farmland. Even on this cool, rainy, off-season morning, a few hikers could be seen in the distance, a casual walker with her dog on a leash, two more serious trekkers with day-packs on their back. Hiking Ashdown could turn into quite an expedition: its six thousand acres lead gradually into the South Downs, and the Downs roll then to the sea.

As we drove through Ashdown Forest, I realized that it had yet another face, of modest tourist attractions. This Ashdown Forest includes Heaven Farm, once the "home farm" for a nearby estate, Danehurst, and now open to visitors. A nature trail of one-and-a-half miles through the farm's surrounding land recently won a conservation award from the South of England Agricultural Society.

Ashdown Forest Farm, also a family-run working farm, has a collection of farm animals with appeal to children, like Ben, the miniature Shire horse; sheep, goats, cows, pigs, ponies and poultry. Several rare breeds are part of this collection, like the Herdwick black-faced sheep and the bronze turkeys, so called for the tint on their blackish feathers.

Other tourist attractions in the forest include Barkham Manor Vineyard, site of the so-called Piltdown Man discovery; St. George's Vineyard, with an English wine exhibition; the Bluebell Railway, a short-run vintage steam train; Sheffield Park Garden, 100 flowering acres with an arboretum and two lakes, and Wilderness Wood, a family-run Wealden Woodland.

Wilderness Wood sounded closest to the spirit of Pooh. Stopping there late in the afternoon, James and I walked through a deserted yard, filled with wooden picnic tables, birdhouses, lattices and other wood artifacts for sale, into a barn that had been converted into a disarmingly home-made museum. The family who owns the 61 acres of Wilderness Wood tends traditional chestnut copses and plantations of pine, beech and fir; this particular woodland, a notice proudly claimed, has been providing wood for perhaps a thousand years.

Display boards illustrated the evolution of a natural woodland, the process of coppicing (repeated cutting) and the economics of a working wood. Wilderness Wood clearly aimed at educational groups as well as drop-in visitors. Stretched rather disconcertingly on one board was the skin of a badger, killed on the main road ("badgers feed in the wood on worms, beetles, nuts, seeds and roots.") Next to the board on a shelf was the badger's small, sharp skull ("Please handle very carefully.")

Since rain was now falling heavily, we decided not to investigate the longer paths on the property. Ashdown Forest, we agreed, would take more than another trip to explore.

In "The Enchanted Places," Christopher Milne remembers his childhood excursions to the forest: "Only those who could walk to the Forest went there. This meant that when we got there we had the Forest almost entirely to ourselves. And this, in turn, made us feel that it was our Forest and so made it possible for an imaginary world -- Pooh's world -- to be born within the real world." The real world of Ashdown Forest, and the imaginary one, happily, are still there. POOH'S CORNERS BEFORE YOU GO

Rereading the Pooh stories will prepare you for the landscape you'll see: Shepard's drawings are uncannily accurate. At the beginning of "The Enchanted Places," (Dutton) Christopher Milne supplies a map of Pooh sites. He says: "Anybody who has read the stories knows the Forest and doesn't need me to describe it. Pooh's Forest and Ashdown Forest are identical." Ann Thwaite's biography, "A. A. Milne" (Random House, 1990) an engrossing study of a complex man, will further enrich your travels in Pooh Country. When You Get There

The Forest Center, Wych Cross, Forest Row, East Sussex RH18 5JP, England, telephone (0342) 82 3583, is open 2 to 5 during the week April through September, 11 to 5 weekends and holidays, all year.

Ashdown Forest Farm, (0825) 71 2040, off the A22 just south of Wych Cross, is open Tuesday to Sunday February to October, 11 A.M. to 6 P.M. (or dusk). Admission is $3; $2 for those age 4 to 16. .

Heaven Farm, (0825) 790226, Furner's Green, off the A275 south of Danehill, is open 10 A.M. to 6 P.M. every day from Easter through September and on weekends all year. No admission cost, but to walk the nature trail, there is a $3 fee; for school-age children $1.60. .

Wilderness Wood, (0825) 830509, 12 miles south of Tunbridge Wells, in Hadlow Down village, is open all year, 10 A.M. to dusk. Admission is $2.60; children aged 3 to 15 $1.40; prices are lower November to February.

Pooh Corner, High Street, Hartfield, (0892) 770453, is open 9 A.M to 5 P.M.; 1:30 to 5 P.M. on Sunday. Its tearoom serves between 10 A.M. and 4:30 P.M.; 2 to 4:30 P.M. Sunday. Where to Stay

Gravetye Manor, East Grinstead, West Sussex RH19 4LJ, England, (0342) 810567) a few minutes' drive from Ashdown Forest, is a luxurious Elizabethan manor house with a famous garden by William Robinson. Its 18 rooms are $130 to $340 in summer.

Visitors to Bolebroke Watermill, Edenbridge Road, Hartfield, East Sussex, TN7 4JP, England, (0892) 770425, near Hartfield, can stay either in the old mill itself (double rooms $90, including breakfast) or in an Elizabethan barn ($96 to $110).

Newbarn, Wards Lane, Wadhurst, East Sussex TN5 6HP, England, (089278) 2042, is on the Kent-Sussex border, a short drive from Ashdown Forest. Its landscaped garden descends to the shores of Bewl Water, a reservoir now used for recreation and lakeside walks. Double rooms are $38 to $48 a person a night, including breakfast.

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A version of this article appears in print on September 20, 1992, on Page 5005008 of the National edition with the headline: Finding the Corners In Pooh's Real Forest. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe